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Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Argument-Driven Inquiry in the Information Literacy Instruction in Taiwan #ecil2015

Next at the European Conference on Information Literacy 2015 for me was Argument-Driven Inquiry in the Information Literacy Instruction in Taiwan , presented by Lin Ching Chen, coauthored with Yaw-Huei Chen. She started by identifying the importance of argument learning (which means meaning making anargument using logical reasoning and relevant evidence to convince and audience whilst condsidering one's own opinion). The speaker felt that there was a lot of similarity between information literacy and argument-driven inquiry. The purpose of her presentation was to examine students' overall argument performance and to get the views of teachers and students.
She used a class of 30 grade 5 (which is towards the end of primary school, I think) learners in Taiwan where IL using the Super 6 and Big 6 were intergrated into the curriculum. The exercise involved groups of students chosing a controversial figure, mindmap the person, identify pros and cons of the person with evidence, write argumentative essays and then present their conclusions to the class.
As a research instrument she had a 13 item instrument (e.g. asking them to give a positive example or argument abpuyt something, or asking about the argumentative process itself), which was used for a pre and post test, and looking at the written answer and using a kind of rubric as analysis framework. There were much better results in the post test. One third of students had difficulty integrating multiple perspectives in one text. 50% could apply what they learned in argumentative texts. Looking at the teachers' opinions; time was a key problem (more time was needed). The speaker recommended teacher librarian and classroom teacher systematically and collaboratively designing argument-driven inquiry projects.

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Information Literacy is ...

"the adoption of appropriate information behaviour to identify, through whatever channel or medium, information well fitted to information needs, leading to wise and ethical use of information in society." (Webber and Johnston)